Pond help

[transitboy]

Looks good mate,I DO MISS MY POND

[kellys_eye]

Wow! That's a 'serious' pond TB

Ours is no where near as involved - we have the sum total of zero knowledge of such things and only wanted a 'hole with fish' when we started! Ours is what the missus calls a 'natural woodland waterhole' There is no filtering - we get so much rain that the pond is effectively refilled once a month no matter what we do....

Plus we used the area and materials available to us at the time. All I actually bought was a couple of 10"x2" boards, some postcrete and the liner - the remainder was left over decking boards, left over shed cladding, some tree trunks we had cut for fuel (!) etc etc. We even got the non-fish stock (newts, sticklebacks, frogs, water plants, grasses etc) from the local area, including out of our own private watercourse.

As with most things we do that start out 'low cost' I have no illusions that the expense will grow exponentially and we'll learn from our mistakes. Such is the way we roll.

[Someone-Else]

As with most things we do that start out 'low cost' I have no illusions that the expense will grow exponentially and we'll learn from our mistakes. Such is the way we roll.

I can appreciate that you are learning, and what I say is nothing personal.

I would suggest for the welfare of your fish you do some more research. I am willing to offer advice but it is your choice.

I should also like to mention there are a lot of myths regarding ponds and fish. Below are some of the most common ones.

(Any one reading this please feel free to chip in / agree or disagree)

1) Fish will only grow to the size of their home.
Fish like any other living thing will grow to the size that is normal for them. So a small fish breed really will stay small. Goldfish on the other hand are normal to grow to around 2 feet long and live up to 25+ years. But they do have to be looked after to do this.

2) Ponds don't need filtration.
Imagine you live in a house but it has no toilet, so you "dump" where ever you like. For a while it wont show as the size of you to the size of your house is huge. But after a while the waste has nowhere to go and so..........
It is said that if you have enough plants you really don't need filters. There are some people that will say this is 100% true, but the down side is, if it were true, why can it not be duplicated in every pond? Some folk have been lucky but most of us have to resort to added filtration.

3) The water is clear so it must be ok
You can't see a fart, but you sure can smell one. The thing with ponds is the build up of things you can't see Nitrates and Nitrites its the build up of these that kill fish.

4) Koi are a good fish to have.
Koi need a lot of looking after, even more so than normal fish. They also grow very quick. In order for a Koi to live long and healthy they should be able to swim up and down as well as sideways, in order to do this a koi pond should be at least 5 feet deep. (You only build a koi pond once) Koi are NOT are beginners fish.

There really is a lot to keeping fish, I am sure others on here will also offer help / opinions. There are also dedicated forums out there too.

[kellys_eye]

All advice and knowledge is readily absorbed and put in the 'keep it for future reference' file so your comments are always welcome.

I have read and heard about the various myths and tend to know the myths from the facts (as I do look the details up when I feel the need to - the Heron 'myth' is just me giving in to the missuses concept of bird deterrents, not it's actual ability to work!)

We will, of course, keep an eye and chemical test routine on the state of the pond - as we used to do with a fish tank we kept some years ago - but our last pond managed to keep half a dozen fish alive for 8 years without interruption, filtering or even basic care..... it was a simple 4 foot deep hole about 8 feet across that was dug out when we had foundations scraped back for the workshops.

That particular pond had greenery (weeds) from the loch, a couple of lilies and nothing else. The fish eventually disappeared courtesy of the local OTTER !! No filtering, the fish were fed once a week (if they were lucky!) and it relied entirely on rain water for topping up.

The new pond is just a larger version!